Truth and reason are common to everyone, and are no more his who spake them first than his who speaks them after.

I would rather be old for a shorter time than be old before my time.

Those that will combat use and custom by the strict rules of grammar do but jest

I do not portray the thing in itself. I portray the passage; not a passing from one age to another, or, as the people put it, from seven years to seven years, but from day to day, from minute to minute.

One man may have some special knowledge at first-hand about the character of a river or a spring, who otherwise knows only what everyone else knows. Yet to give currency to this shred of information, he will undertake to write on the whole science of physics. From this fault many great troubles spring.

Things seem greater by imagination than they are in effect.

My errors are by now natural and incorrigible; but the good that worthy men do the public by making themselves imitable, I shall perhaps do by making myself evitable.